


Fracture

by divine_rose



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII (Video Game 1997), Final Fantasy VII Remake (Video Game 2020)
Genre: Character Study, Cloud's brain is soup, Gen, Mentions of Blood, Oneshot, Remake complient mostly but I play a little fast and loose with things, mindfuckery, no beta we die like men, rated m because I like to be safe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-28
Updated: 2020-08-28
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:54:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26151469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/divine_rose/pseuds/divine_rose
Summary: Just how exactly did he get here again? And why did he smell like the color green and dirt?
Comments: 3
Kudos: 25





	Fracture

He wasn’t quite sure how he got here. 

The last twenty four hours—hell—the last  _ anything  _ Cloud could wring out of his numb brain that somehow felt about three times too big for his skull right now, was a blur of disjointed moments that he viewed with a level of detachment as one would a movie—except he supposedly had lived those moments. 

Fishing gil out of his pockets and sliding the money into a worn counter in some shady inn that looked like it had seen its fair share of payment disputes. 

Making some sort of muttered off hand comment to the innkeeper regarding his appearance.

In his memories the words are muffled but Cloud is pretty sure he can recall the words  _ blood _ and remembers plucking at his shirt and waving dismissively. Whatever he must have said surely seemed to suffice as he was in a room now and to be honest he really  _ can’t  _ remember where the blood came from, only that it was fresh enough to be washed out with cold water. 

_ Remember, don’t rub it.  _

He recognizes his mother’s voice from a memory and is relieved to at least have that much going for him because everything else in his mind feels numb and distant. 

He can’t remember her face though. 

Fuck. 

Cloud drops his now wet shirt—his SOLDIER 1st class shirt— back in the sink with a sad  _ plop _ , hanging his head in his hands. 

He’s had the smell of mako in his nose for as long as he has waking memory, which admittedly isn’t long but it’s enough to cause his stomach to twist every fifteen or so minutes and threaten revolt. 

It’s pungent and terrible and smells like someone shot him full of liquified grass just to see what would happen. What would normally be a perhaps pleasant smell in small doses turned rotten by excess. 

This was the price of being SOLDIER though, Cloud knew that. He slowly lifted his head up to look at himself in the mirror, specifically his eyes. 

Mako blue. 

A mark of SOLDIER. 

He leaned in a bit closer to get a better look at them, peering deeper into the mirror when he swore he saw them  _ change _ , swore he saw them  _ shift  _ and slit like a cat’s, blue bleeding into green like blood bled through a shirt and—

_ Cloud, Run! _

Something like lightning erupted from the center of his mind, his ears ringing and his vision whiting out in waves like an image someone forgot to adjust on an old television, going  _ sideways _ and then he was  _ almost  _ sideways, reeling back and slamming into the frame of the bed behind him in the tiny room. Loud enough to hear muffled cries of concern but his lips moved soundlessly to respond to them. 

He’d have a nasty bruise tomorrow, and the impact only served to remind him that he had other mysterious bruises. Probably got into some fights on the way here. 

Oh. Someone was still on the other side of his door asking if he was ok. The sound was muffled, as if they were further away then just behind the door but the repeated question helped him finally realize that if was a real person and they were asking him a question. Cloud slowly got to his feet, shaking his head lightly and wobbling a bit to clear out the static from his head and limbs. 

“Fine. I’m fine.” He told the concerned stranger curtly. They backed off but the steps away from the door seemed reluctant. Whatever. As long as they left him in peace. 

With a heavy sigh he collapsed onto the bed, kicking his boots off which were caked in dirt, like he had been out running through mud instead of the streets of Midgar. Every single muscle in his body was made acutely apparent to him because they all ached in an orchestra of pain. He felt heavy and once he was down he knew he wasn’t going to be moving again for the rest of the time. That was fine, best to get some sleep anyway. 

He awoke to the smell of fire.

Adrenaline ignited in his blood and before he could even process thought he was halfway across the room, throwing open the window to his shitty motel room that mostly looked out onto a brick alleyway if memory served, but memory didn’t serve because right now he was looking at his house. His house from back home. The architecture of the cottage distinctly foreign looking wedged amongst the tall brick buildings. 

Also it was on fire. 

Burning wildly, the smell of smoldering wood filling his senses. His house was on fire. His mother was in that house. Without thinking he stepped back, he could leap the distance from window to window, he could save her there was still time—

He slammed the window open so hard he nearly snapped it from the frame, bracing a foot against the ledge and preparing to leap the distance across—thank goodness he fell asleep still wearing his boots. 

A distant shout, like someone trying to yell through water at him, he ignored it at first there was no time for whatever that was, his house was on fire and his mom was in there and—

“Hey, Buddy, just what are you trying to do?” The voice finally shouted loud enough to cut through the static and ring clear in his ears, shattering his concentration as he braced to leap in the process. Anger lit like a match and he snapped: 

“Shut up!” 

He didn’t have time for this. Cloud gripped the edges of the frame tightly, coiled like a spring ready to leap when he heard the voice again. 

“Suit yourself but you’re gonna slam into a brick wall like that” 

What? 

Cloud’s vision swam and what was once the smoldering facade of his childhood home was not a solid brick wall across a too small alleyway. He could feel his face frozen in a shocked expression and was aware that it probably looked foolish and he didn’t want to look foolish but he was too in shock to move it as he slowly titled his gaze down to see that he hadn’t been completely wrong when he smelled fire, there was a man down there in the small alleyway, warming his hands against a small can fire to beat back the cold of the night. The same man who saw him about to leap clean into a solid brick wall and was kind enough to try to stop him. 

Quickly climbing back into the room, Cloud muttered a string of apologies and excuses to the stranger before slamming the window shut and hoping he’d never see that man again as long as he lived lest he die of embarrassment. 

He really needed to get some fucking sleep. 

* * *

Morning came too fast and too violent as harsh rays slipped through broken blinds and right into Cloud’s eyes. Just what he needed. 

It took washing his face with cold water a grand total of three times for him to even begin to feel awake, his body still ached in protest of every movement he made but he knew he couldn’t stay here. He had a frankly depressing amount of gil to his name and he needed to get supplies, eat something, and figure out how to go about selling his skill with his sword. 

He glanced sideways at the buster sword that laid propped up against the wall where he left it, it was his sword, he knew it was his sword and yet it seemed to loom over him. It’s mere presence had a power and somewhere in the deepest part of his gut a small voice whispered that he wasn’t worthy of it. He ignored it of course because that was a silly thought surely born out of lack of sleep. The sword was his sword as much as he was a SOLDIER. 

Ex-SOLDIER. He had left after all. It had become too much and decided to abandon ship and make his way to the biggest city in all of Gaia in order to sell his skills to anyone with the money to pay for them. 

_ SOLDIER is a den of monsters…. _

“Don’t go inside.” He whispered to his reflection. His tired eyes momentarily saw a shimmer in the glass, a trick of the light leaving a different face in the glass. Cloud really needed to get some decent sleep, maybe then he’d stop seeing things. 

Something else did catch his eye though, a shimmer of metal in his left ear—or a lack thereof when his eyes readjusted again. Strange. That wasn’t right. He leaned in to examine where he knew he should have an earring, yet there was nothing, not even a hole as he gingerly felt with his fingers. 

His mind tried to justify it, probably fell out in all the skuffle and he forgot to get a new one. For a very long period of time enough for the hole to close up completely. Sure. That sounded about right. 

He grabbed his now dry shirt, the blood was only mostly out but fortunately the material was dark enough that no one would notice the ever so slightly discoloration unless they were up close and Cloud did not want anyone that close. He grabbed his sword from the wall and refitted it onto his back. The weight was familiar and comfortable. 

Once outside the inn and onto the streets he slowly began to realize he had little idea what to do next. He had a plan, right? Coming to Midgar seemed so very urgent but he couldn’t for the life of him remember why aside from the rather broad goal of becoming a mercenary. 

So he had parts A and Z down, he was only missing twenty four letters along the way. 

First thing was to take care of his missing earring. He managed to find a cheap one, not wanting to waste too much gil that he didn’t have but he felt strangely naked without it. The absence of such a tiny thing gnawing at his insides until he had to remedy it. 

Even if reopening the hole hurt like a bitch and stained more blood onto his already stained gloves. If he had the gil to burn he would take the entire outfit through the wash but they would need gil for a laundromat and a change of clothes. Cloud had neither of those things. 

Still, he felt better now, more comfortable in his skin. 

For lack of a better plan he deemed it best to perhaps walk through the various sectors of the slums and hope someone saw the clearly former military man with the rather large sword and inquire about his services. That seemed the best method since he sure as shit wasn’t a salesman. 

Midgar was a strange city. All steel and smog down below, and dust from the dried up earth under his feet. Couldn’t even see the sky, except for one sector where the plate had collapsed years ago and left a hole that let the heavens peer down at the downtrodden below and allow the people in the dark a glimpse of the wide expanse of the sky. 

Funny. He grew up in a small town where you could see the sky and the stars, he knew well what it looked like, but somehow looking at it in this city in a place where he shouldn’t have been able to see it made the sky seem so much bigger, like it would swallow him whole. 

Clouds rolled in, a storm was coming and fast as the first tell tale raindrops hit his cheeks. 

Even as the rain began to fall, escalating quickly from a couple drops to a full downpour, he couldn’t bring himself to move from where he stood. 

Something was very wrong. 

Every little drop of rain began to feel far too heavy on his skin, everything began to feel too heavy—the sword on his back especially—as if his body suddenly and violently remembered that no, he couldn’t carry the weight of it. It pulled him down and he struggled to get the heavy weight off his back and then to lift the sword at all, struggling in vain in front of the train station with plenty of onlookers as he struggled and cursed at the metal. He could feel their eyes shifting away from him and their paces quickening. 

The rain felt oppressive and he just wanted to get out of it, but he couldn’t lift his damn  _ sword.  _ He dragged it a couple feet but his muscles screamed in protest until he collapsed in a boneless heap around it. Muscles in his arms and legs were screaming, as if he hadn’t tried to move them for years and then he had tried all at once only to tear like paper. His head was  _ killing _ him too, every raindrop seeming to magnify it and there was this awful overly sweet, pungent  _ smell _ in his nose that made him nauseous. It was raining in a city of dust and metal, it should smell like rust and rot all around him but instead he just smelled dirt and grass, far too much grass

And blood. 

Everything went sideways again, the world turned upside down and he felt the concrete below him raise up to meet his back violently as he fell. The various pains had become too much and now he was just lying on his back on the filthy ground, sword beside him as he stared up at the sliver of the open sky in this metal prison of a city. Raindrops delicately hitting his cheeks now where once they seemed so violent. 

This was familiar. 

He closed his eyes slowly, the agony and terror were gone now and something like peace had settled into the hole they left in his chest. Maybe he’d be able to get some sleep out here at least. It was far from wise but he wasn’t moving anytime soon. 

Everything drifted away and drifted back like waves on a shore, he was drenched by now but he couldn’t bring himself to care. 

Though there was a voice in his ears, nagging as it was repeated again and again, getting louder and louder. 

_ “Cloud?”  _

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> I can't believe it's taken me this long to write FF7 fic
> 
> Also I know Cloud already has a piercing when he's a baby in Crisis Core but I liked the imagery too much to pass up


End file.
